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Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

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Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#561

Post by totalZero »

kingcharles wrote: post #540
BingoAhoy wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind going into detail about the right violations lawsuit please? I'm very interested in how you had success and what were the specific violations. I'm very sorry to hear how your life got turned upside down for a victimless felony. Makes me sick we cage people for some fabricated rule invented by some out of touch legislators.

I think I filed about 60 cases in total. So, off the top of my head... one that is still ongoing is that newspapers are banned inside the Cook County Jail for "security" reasons. You actually have a Constitutional right to access newspapers under the 1st Amendment, but that doesn't stop an agency from blocking this right and then making you sue them. The primary reasons given by detention facilities for blocking news…

Sounds like you did great things for some really disadvantaged people. Until reading your comment, I had never connected the right to read newspapers with the freedom to print them.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#562

Post by totalZero »

hanniabu wrote: post #379
colechristensen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct thing to do if you want your phone not to be searched is to shut it off. The tools used to search phones generally work with unpatched vulnerabilities and you don’t want to do anything that looks like tampering with evidence. When off the encryption of the device will be most effective and resilient to attack because nothing will be unencrypted until you enter your passcode at boot.

Couldn't turning your phone off be seen as tampering with evidence?

If you haven't altered, destroyed, or concealed the physical phone in any way, then why would turning it off be considered tampering with evidence? Also, I believe there would be a burden to prove that some material stored on the phone would constitute "evidence." Pretty hard for the cops to do that if they can't get into the phone.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#563

Post by KronisLV »

jobigoud wrote: post #559
KronisLV wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make sure you always use a password on your devices though. Biometrics are not protected by the 5th Amendment in the USA as the police can legally force your finger onto a touchpad or hold your face in front of a camera. This seems kind of crazy to me. If passwords being private are okay, why should the powers that be allowed to treat biometrics any differently, at least in the context of unlocking devices? Otherwi…

Using biometrics as password is kind of crazy. Biometrics are login. They say who you are, not some secret you know.

And yet it happens, because it's easy.

Is it not the wisest decision ever? Sure.

However, since it's already being done, we might as well create laws around protecting this use case.

For example, from what i know, people in the USA use their SSNs both as identifiers and sometimes as something like a pseudo-password, which seems like a really bad approach, but at the same time should be regarded as the objective and sub-optimal reality, with which we need to cope until a better solution is implemented (if ever).

Saying that the method is bad and shouldn't be considered when it's already in widespread usage is something that we just can't do.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#564

Post by ChrisKnott »

selectodude wrote: post #445
ChrisKnott wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't reconcile the amount of time in jail with apparently being offered a plea deal with no custody

The criminal justice system in Chicago is a total mess. None of it makes sense on any real level. Total speculation, since obviously I don't know the details of this specific case, but I would guess pled down to 2nd degree murder and received a sentence of time served.

It seems like it's this guy[0][1]. He was caught in a To Catch A Predator style sting and then they also found CP on his devices. Having read this article I'm interested in his claims of innocence, I'm not seeing a defence here.

[0] edit: decided this was doxing

[1] edit: decided this was doxing

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#565

Post by KronisLV »

kingcharles wrote: post #485
edgyquant wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t post that, if I’m correct you’ve just doxed yourself since your nickname corresponds with the name of a gentleman who has been there for over 8 years awaiting a murder trial.

Different person, although I did a double-take when I saw that name on the list a week ago when I found it. I'm King Charles, he is Charles King.

> if I’m correct you’ve just doxxed yourself

The parent commenter was probably referring to this: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=doxxing

Some people may enjoy having their real world identities be separate from their online presence, depending on personal preferences and how security conscious they are about that particular account.

Some communities may or may not also have additional rules about exposing your own identity, or the identities of others, which should be taken into account.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#566

Post by IceWreck »

kingcharles wrote: post #470
selectodude wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per his other comments, he spent 8+ years in Cook County so it would almost certainly have to be first degree murder.

No. Nonviolet, victimless felony. The maximum sentence was actually 3 years in prison. So I've done almost three times the maximum sentence because I refused to plead out. I'm British and a felony conviction would impact my immigration status and also I'm innocent. So I refused. I actually thought I'd be in jail for a few weeks. Then 8 years later.

I feel bad for you. The justice system in the US sucks. How did you get out ? Were you declared innocent or what ?

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#567

Post by thaumasiotes »

perl4ever wrote: post #529
thaumasiotes wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The majority of people prefer the status quo. That strikes me as a tautology. That is definitely not a tautology. It is common that the majority of people views the status quo as undesirable.

Maybe there are two different concepts of "prefer". The status quo is likely to always be some sort of local maxima/minima. So most people may prefer it to most available small changes, but most people may prefer a large change if there was a way to get there in a coordinated way.

> The status quo is likely to always be some sort of local maxima/minima.

No, that's still not true.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#568

Post by giantg2 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #554
giantg2 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first half of that quote (omitted) provides important context that is missing here. The conversation and showing the "other" side why and how it could benefit them, as well as addressing any concerns they have about any one-sided proposal, is vitally important to a healthy and productive process - the main point that I was trying to make. If we just blame everything on the "other" side, we will drift further apar…

> The conversation and showing the "other" side why and how it could benefit them, as well as addressing any concerns they have about any one-sided proposal, is vitally important to a healthy and productive process That is great, but has a requirement: Both sides operating in good faith. That's just not happening now and hasn't happened in many years. We need to deal with that reality or keep suffering dire consequen…

It can be hard to tell when a side isn't operating in good faith due to differences of perspective and the heavy political rhetoric. If we assume the other side isn't operating in good faith, then we create a situation where neither side will ever trust the other, and the concern for addressing details and edge cases will be gone. This will lead to partisan laws that ignore the needs of a relatively large part of the population. Often times the two major parties want similar end goals, but have different opinions on what the strategy/implementation should look like.

I think we can go a level deeper than your prerequisite and say that we should be viewing the proposals of others in a charitable way and assume the best possible meaning - similar to the guideline on this site. Once a side assumes the other isn't acting in good faith (whether right or wrong), then it's already too late for democracy. I don't know what the fix would be, since people continue to vote for the representatives of both sides, and want the things either side fight for. So it seems it would require an undemocratic change, or a complete mindset shift within the population.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#569

Post by hungryforcodes »

IPTN wrote: post #441
sixstringtheory wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by “consume” you mean “acquire the contents” of all those comments, well, you’ll have to read them all. A more interesting question to me for a while has been, how to follow the evolution of a deep thread in which the time it takes to read a larger amount of comments, even more are made. How to know where all the new ones are? It’d be cool to be able to diff a thread based on timestamp.

https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl does exactly that. Makes following threads so much better.

You and the parent post have both interesting answers -- thanks :)

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#570

Post by tatersolid »

wolverine876 wrote: post #517
marcosdumay wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I live in a country with 4 times more homicides than the US after adjusting for population. Our laws state very clearly that the police does not get much extra immunity either (although, corruption gets in the way there), and our courts have no trouble at all to discard any piece of information the police acquires while they have a gun pointed at somebody's head. I really don't understand how the US justice…

> I live in a country with 4 times more homicides than the US after adjusting for population I didn't know there was such a place?

The US intentional homicide rate per capita is ~5/100k. Many countries are much higher. Venezuela in comparison has a 7x higher murder rate. El Salvador leads the world at 10x the US murder rate.
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